Cheney Visit Riles Filipinos

U.s. Defense Commitment Restated

February 20, 1990|By Uli Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune.

MANILA — Radical students pelted the American Embassy with rotten tomatoes and blew up a mailbox Monday to protest a visit by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who said U.S. forces are committed to defend democracy in the Philippines.

In another anti-American demonstration, 30 people were hurt when 300 protesters threw stones at police guarding the entrance to Clark Air Base.

Cheney said at a news conference that the United States, unlike the Soviet Union, would make only ``modest changes`` in the deployment of its forces in Asia.

``We are not talking about a fundamental shift in U.S. policy,`` he said. ``We will be making some adjustments.``

The statement was in sharp contrast to remarks by a Soviet government spokesman, Gennady Gerasimov, who told a seminar in Manila two hours earlier that Moscow will withdraw the bulk of its forces from its Asian bases.

Cheney was asked if the U.S. would mobilize forces to defend President Corazon Aquino should another coup be mounted against her government.

``The U.S. has been and will be committed to democracy. But we do not discuss contingencies,`` he said.

Philippine Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos, with whom Cheney was holding talks, added hastily, ``We do not expect any such contingency.``

In December, a show of force by U.S. Marines and a flyover by U.S. Air Force planes helped crush a coup attempt, the sixth and most serious since Aquino took office.

Cheney`s visit, which was soured by Aquino`s refusal to meet with him, was part of a tour that included South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan.

Sources said the snub was prompted by U.S. criticism of Aquino`s administration as ``too soft`` on coup plotters and by the U.S. Congress slashing $96 million from $481 million that Washington had pledged in compensation for the use of military bases in the Philippines.

``We recognize there is a shortfall of $96 million over what we had anticipated,`` Cheney said Monday. He pledged his ``best effort`` to restore full funding.

Ramos told reporters later that Cheney had said ``supplemental appropriations`` might be made next year to make up for this year`s cut.

About 200 demonstrators tried to storm the U.S. Embassy compound in Manila, and police fired tear gas to hold them back during a 20-minute fracas. Five police officers were injured by flying wood from the exploding mailbox.

At Clark Air Base, 50 miles north of Manila, about 300 young people hurled rocks at club-wielding police who stopped them from tearing down barbed-wire barricades at the entrance to the U.S. base. About 30 protesters suffered cuts and bruises.

The incidents illustrated the volatile situation in a country divided by intense debate over whether to renew the leases of the six U.S. military installations in the Philippines, among them Clark Air Base and the huge naval base at Subic Bay.

The anger has been stoked in recent months by a new sense of Philippine nationalism. The debate has included the pros and cons of American involvement in quashing the latest military coup as well as Washington`s failure to pay the outstanding $96 million for using the bases.

In this climate, Cheney became the target of anti-American sentiment. At one point, government officials said he would enter the country as a tourist, not as a foreign dignitary. Aquino finally halted such reports, but only after considerable strain to U.S.-Philippine relations.

When Cheney arrived in Manila Monday, the country`s 169,000-strong armed forces were on high alert amid rumors of another imminent coup. Rebel soldiers have vowed to overthrow the president, who they say is incapable of confronting alleged wide-scale corruption. Aquino rejects that accusation, saying the dissidents` true motivation is to seize power.

Walls on Magsaysay Boulevard were daubed with anti-American slogans like